


Broken Things

by josephides



Category: Alpha and Omega - Patricia Briggs, Mercy Thompson Series - Patricia Briggs
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24589096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephides/pseuds/josephides
Summary: If Mercy didn't leave Aspen Creek immediately after Sam tried to elope with her. And if Bran had fewer morals. And, and, and....Written, confusingly, from Adam's POV.
Relationships: Bran Cornick/Mercy Thompson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 56





	1. Chapter 1

The girl, for she was still to Adam’s eyes, a girl, stared mulishly at him as they sat in his office whilst Charles put forward his proposal. Adam had heard of Mercedes Thompson. The entire werewolf population had probably heard of Mercedes Thompson, the girl who played tricks on the Marrok, smeared him with peanut butter and crashed his car. His Coyote foster-daughter. He smiled at her, broadly, and she blushed and looked away.

“And Bran’s okay with this?” Adam asked Charles, now that he had distracted Mercedes from glaring at him.

Charles gave Adam the respect of not lying. “He will be.”

“He doesn’t know? That’s she here?”

“I will tell him. When things are calmer.”

Mercedes rolled her eyes and spoke for the first time. “He doesn’t want Leah to know.”

Ah. The relationship between Bran and Leah was complicated. Adam understood that, better than most and his wife wasn’t even a werewolf. Marriage was work.

“What did you do to Leah?” Adam asked, lips quirking. Leah had not endeared himself to Adam, on the few occasions he had met her.

“It’s nothing to do with Leah,” Charles insisted, with dogged determination to keep their familial secrets within the family.

“Charles, it’s literally _only_ to do with Leah,” Mercedes sighed. She sat up and rubbed her hands over her face. She had looked tired when Charles had escorted her in and now she looked exhausted. “Look, sir, I won’t be a problem for you. I just need to live somewhere so I can earn some money for a few months before I go to college. Then I’ll be out of your hair.”

Adam’s eyes flicked to Charles and then back to the young woman in front of him. “That’s fine. There’s a double-wide at the edge of my property. I usually rent it but we’ve been having it refurbished. You can have it.”

Of course, Charles would have known this or he wouldn't have come to him.

“We’ll pay rent, of course,” Charles said, smoothly.

Adam smiled. “Of course,” he replied. If he was going to be all-but-responsible for the troublemaking foster-daughter of his boss, he’d better be getting something for it.

He wondered, fleetingly, what Christy was going to say about this.

*

Adam edited the details of their tenant’s background to the pack. Yes, she was from Aspen Creek. No, she wasn’t a werewolf. As to why she was in the Tri-Cities, seventeen and alone, he was none the wiser so he had no need to edit that. He gave everyone the impression she wanted to try standing on her own two feet for a while, that Mercy was a little too independent for Bran’s autocratic tendencies. They’d all been teenagers, once, after all. It was something they could understand.

Christy wasn’t happy and made him feel bad about making the decision without her – though he had always rented out the trailer himself in the past and she had never been particularly interested. It was 'business' and Christy didn't get involved with 'business'. Perhaps she was just nervous, he reasoned. Jesse was just turning one and they’d been renovating the trailer since before she was born. As a new and young mother, Christy was sensitive to strangers and Adam had just invited one to live practically with them.

“She could babysit, maybe,” Adam suggested one evening, trying to make amends. He had taken Christy out for dinner at a restaurant on the river. It was a nice night, warm, but Christy hadn’t wanted to eat outside for fear of being eaten alive by the insects. She looked beautiful, in a low-cut blue dress, wearing the diamonds he had bought for their anniversary the month before. Several men had looked at her admiringly when they'd walked in, which gave Adam a buzz.

“Adam, we have an entire pack to babysit,” Christy said. She eyed his rare steak – a house speciality that he always ordered when they came here - and shook her head, blonde curls shaking. “Are you really going to eat all that?”

Adam continued to be baffled at this animosity Christy presented to a girl she had never met but he didn’t worry about it unduly. It was a subject that rarely came up unless Christy was feeling particularly annoyed at something else he had done. Besides, Mercedes kept to herself. From what he could see, she had got herself a series of part time jobs suitable for a teenager – the uniforms drying on her line were a give away – and mostly just used the trailer to sleep.

“What if she’s, you know, using that trailer to _sleep around_ ,” Christy protested, one night, shortly after she had told him she had a headache and didn't feel up to making love.

Adam rolled onto his back and looked at her. “What?”

“She’s _seventeen_ , Adam.”

It wasn’t lost on him that he had met Christy when she was seventeen and this was the height of hypocrisy. “I think we would have noticed if there had been a parade of boys.” He narrowed his eyes. He had not missed the pair of binoculars that had appeared on the window sill that had the best line of sight to the trailer. “Actually, since you spend so much time spying on her, wouldn’t _you_ have noticed?”

Christy's flare of anger annoyed him. She huffed. “I’m being responsible. Someone should be looking out for her.”

“Fine. Tomorrow I will go and check-up on her.” Adam rolled back onto his side, the matter closed.

*

“Hey, sorry about the mess,” Mercy said, swooping down to pick up a pair of sneakers that were by the door. As he stepped into the kitchen, she quickly started putting things away, pink with embarrassment. The trailer was clean, just a little untidy. She pounced on a pink bra that was laid over the back of a chair and stuffed it into a drawer.  
  
He grinned. “It’s your home and I’m sorry to stop by unannounced.”

She was looking thin, he thought. The jeans she was wearing were looser than when she had first arrived, her cheekbones sharper. She felt sad. Homesick, he imagined. Lonely. Guilt suffused him. He’d let Christy control his involvement with her. Instead, he should have invited her over more, made her at least temporarily part of the pack.

“Can I get you anything? Um. I have tea. Hot chocolate. Lemonade? I made it,” she added, giving him a smile. Adam was surprised by the smile – it utterly transformed her face from being ‘pretty’, for she was, to being something rather closer to beautiful.

He was momentarily distracted, then chastised himself. “Ah. Lemonade would be great. Thank you.”

Adam looked around the open plan kitchen and living room. The space was well lived in and she had added a few personal touches of her own – posters on the walls of music bands he had never heard of, cushions on the couch and a throw. He subtly sniffed the air. At first, he thought the trailer smelt only of her and he triumphantly thought that Christy's fears over a trail of boys was unfounded.

But then… “Has Bran been here?” he asked, surprised into speaking first.

Mercy paused in pouring the lemonade. “Yeah. A couple of times.”

“Charles told him where you were, then?”

“I guess so.” She was casual, too casual, and she handed him his glass of lemonade with a dimmed smile. “So he didn’t mention he had stopped by?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Mercy looked down into her glass, awkwardly. She would know that passing through another Alpha’s territory was impolite. The Marrok wouldn’t normally do it. Unless, as it seemed, he didn’t want his visit to be public knowledge. “I think he just wanted to check-up on me.”

There was nothing wrong with that, of course.

The thing was that Bran’s scent wasn’t particularly strong in the living room and kitchen area, Adam realised. If his nose was right, which it usually was, the scent was stronger down the hallway, where the bedrooms were. There were two bedrooms, a master and a guest. They hadn’t finished renovating the guest room when Mercy moved in so there was no bed in there, which had been fine as it was only going to be Mercy staying. They’d lowered the rent for that reason.

A series of unsettling thoughts unfolded in Adam’s mind as he drank his lemonade. He managed to say some platitudes that put Mercy at ease. They went to sit on the deck and she talked about her jobs and how much she hated them but she’d made a couple of friends who made them bearable. He made her laugh, telling her about Jesse and her new-found ability to hide in cupboards, muttering to herself and then falling out to ‘surprise’ people. How the pack were all taking it in turns to be increasingly dramatically 'surprised', to everyone's amusement.

Later, he told Christy the truth – that there was no evidence of any boys in the trailer and he didn’t want to ever hear anything more about it. He also confiscated the binoculars, giving her a look that brokered no argument. “She’s coming to Sunday dinner, as well,” he said, sternly. “She’s a kid and she’s alone. Be kind.”

The following day, he sent one of the humans on his team to discretely scout out the trailer whilst she wasn’t there and find out how someone could get inside without anyone observing from the house. Then had them install a couple of cameras. It was his property, so no one questioned it but he explained that a young woman was staying there, a family friend, and he wanted to make sure she was safe. He even implied it was Christy's idea, which made him feel like a heel.

“I’ll keep an eye on the footage, as it’s a personal job,” Adam said, casually.

He left it a few weeks before doing so. As he fast-forwarded through the footage, hours and hours of inactivity, he prayed for nothing. So it was with a sick feeling of disappointment when, one Sunday night at 11.54pm, he watched the Marrok of the werewolves walk up to the back of the trailer, wait a moment and then climb in through the opened master bedroom window, helped by a young woman with long, dark hair.

*

The dilemma plagued Adam.

There was a basic territory problem, of course. The Marrok had repeatedly entered his territory without even a by-your-leave. It was disrespectful and the kind of behaviour Bran himself abhorred.

But that wasn’t the real problem. He felt a responsibility towards Mercedes. Charles had charged him with it. To look out for her – to treat her like a child placed in his care. They had not told him the real reason she had been exited from Aspen Creek, only that there was an issue with Leah, which was common knowledge.

And if Bran was cheating on his wife and mate with Mercedes, that would certainly lead to some ‘issues’, Adam thought furiously.

What the hell had Charles got him into?

What the hell was Bran _doing_?

When he had a cooler head, Adam admitted he didn’t know for _certain_ that Bran was sleeping with Mercedes. Try as he might, however, he couldn’t come up with many good reasons for visiting a young woman’s home in the middle of the night and doing so by her bedroom window.

If Bran’s intentions were honourable, he would have told Adam he was visiting Mercy – which Adam would not have questioned – and he would have done so by driving up to the house and entering via the front door. If Bran hadn’t wanted Leah to know, for whatever reason, no one in Adam’s pack was going to tell her. Leah wasn’t friendly with other wolves.

There really was only one thing to do, he realised.

*

He met Charles in a diner outside of Missoula. He’d left at dawn, wanting to be back before his absence became noticeable.

“You placed Mercedes into my care. I need to know if this is something I should be worried about.”

Adam slid the photo across the table.

Charles looked at it. Adam was surprised to see sadness on his face. He turned the photo back over so the image of Mercy pulling Bran into her bedroom wasn’t visible.

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” Charles said.

When he made no move to leave, Adam waited.

“My brother started courting Mercy, last year. The very day she turned sixteen. Da didn’t like it – we _all_ didn’t like it.”

No kidding, Adam thought. He wasn’t sure how old Sam was, older than Charles, at the very least. The age of consent in Montana, like in Washington State, was sixteen and he knew for many older wolves, who tended to look young as well, 'age' was a subjective thing. Adam had been one of those wolves. He had started dating Christy when she was seventeen and he was several decades older than her, not that he had appeared it. Now he had a daughter, of course, he felt differently. If a two-hundred year old predator wanted to date her at sixteen, he would be in for a surprise.

“Eventually, Sam tried to convince her to run away with him, to get married and start a family. I think Da caught them in the woods; he’s never explicitly said what happened, just that he put a stop to it. There was a huge fight, after, and Leah of course got involved. She wanted Mercy sent away and I think she pushed Da too far because he got contrary about it and insisted she stayed. Sam left, instead. He’s – not doing so well.” Charles looked out of the window at the passing traffic, as if distracted by thoughts of his brother.

After a moment, he continued, bracingly. “Leah started to make life for Mercy harder. Harder than she’d made it before and she – well, before the incident with Sam, Mercy had been a child, at least. Now she was a young woman and Leah started to see her as competition for attention, for respect. She became very jealous. And Mercy has a stubborn streak a mile wide. So she began to _make_ Leah jealous.”

Adam blew out a breath and moved his coffee cup around. “Suicidal.”

Charles allowed himself a small smile. “Quite. And, to be fair to Mercy, I’m not suggesting she became some kind of _floozy_. She just. She started dressing differently. Wore make up. Put her hair up. She was more friendly with the men in the pack, almost flirtatious. She’d touch them frequently – hugs and kisses on the cheek, wrapping her arms around them. Laugh at their jokes and remember their birthdays, their stories. Bake for them spontaneously. She was…sweet and attentive, exactly the opposite of Leah. And these are old wolves so they treated it as you would expect – they loved her, absolutely adored her. Their eyes would follow her when she walked into a room. They thought she was funny when she was a trickster but now she was a young woman and she was making it clear that she was… not _available_ , exactly. But to be considered. It drove Leah absolutely wild, which was her intention. I was angry with her, with both of them, so it took me too long to realise that it wasn’t just Leah Mercy was tormenting. It was Da.” 

Rubbing his hands over his face, Adam acknowledged that he had been right. “Did she know? That Bran—“ He was loath to say it.

“Adam, I don’t think _Da_ knew. He’d always been funny about Mercy. Everything she did, he seemed to blow out of proportion. The good and the bad. She could get under his skin so badly. She could make him laugh harder than anyone else,” Charles mused, his voice wistful, as if these thoughts were only just occurring to him. “She could make him angrier than anyone else. Anyway. They started arguing. And it wasn’t like it used to be - him screaming at her and her meekly lowering her eyes because she’d done something wrong. She’d scream back. She was an adult, she could do what she liked, he wasn’t her father, and so on. If I thought she could get under his skin before, it was nothing to what life was like for those few weeks. He was _murderously_ angry, all the time. There were times I thought the wolf was entirely in control. I suggested, then, that perhaps she should be sent away, to live with her mother. If anything, that made the situation worse. He couldn’t speak to me for several days.”

The waitress appeared with the ineffable timing of the profession to refill their coffees and ask if they wanted breakfast. They both ordered double portions of eggs and bacon with sides of hash browns and mushrooms.

When she was clear of human earshot, Charles continued. “I had an inkling, then. That this wasn't protectiveness, it was sheer jealousy. Then, suddenly, just as it had begun, it all stopped. The tension in the pack disappeared, overnight. Mercy stopped flirting. She started dressing more normally, went back to treating the wolves in the pack as friends, nothing more. She and Da stopped arguing and instead became pleasantly courteous. Like a fool, I thought they’d come to some kind of agreement. I congratulated him, actually.”

Adam winced.

“Exactly.” Charles saluted him with his coffee cup. “Not realising it wasn’t an agreement, so much as it was an _arrangement_.” With his other hand, Charles turned the photo between them back over and looked at it. “He was doing this. He was having an affair.”

The mind boggled. Adam struggled to picture it. On the small security screen, he had watched the Marrok, one of the most powerful beings in the world, climb into a young woman’s bedroom, no more sophisticated than the young man he appeared to be. He had watched Bran do it several times, more than one night. And still, he struggled to comprehend. “How did he keep it from Leah?” he asked, a burning question that had kept him up nights.

“I have no idea. I still don’t know. _I_ didn’t know until he finally admitted it to me.”

“So he did tell you.”

“Yes. After six months. He spontaneously invited me on a hike and told me when he was sure no one could hear us. He was torn up about it. Guilty. Ashamed. He felt like he was taking away her future.” Charles tapped his fingers on the table. “It’s not that I believed my father infallible. He’s made mistakes. He admits to that. But this—it was like it was out of his control. Like _he_ was out of control. I was the one who suggested that I take her away. Somewhere safe. Away from him.” Charles eyebrows lifted. “His wolf did not like that. But he agreed. Eventually.”

Adam was surprised at that. The wolf was mated to Leah. It was usually the wolf that saw things in black and white, as well. To cheat on a mate without her knowledge was… he didn’t think it would be possible. He knew Bran’s control over the wolf was complete but to test it with this kind of activity would have been a torment. “And what did Mercy think of this?”

“Well, she wasn’t happy about it. But I also think she is sensible enough to recognise what they were doing was dangerous. For both of them.”

Adam sat back and took a gulp of his coffee. This insight into the Marrok’s personal life was almost overwhelming. “How did he find out where she was?”

“I told him. He called me, two months ago, in the middle of the night, sounding strange. I couldn’t say no to a direct request. I hoped, perhaps, he just wanted to know she was safe. Naturally, I had no idea he had gone to see her. Do you know how many times?”

Adam shook his head. "Four times that I've seen on camera. But I think there were more before then."

"Well. There you go," Charles sighed. "My father's famous willpower."

“It’s easy to forget that we are men, too, sometimes,” Adam said, thinking of his own relationships. He loved Christy but the wolf didn’t think much of her. That might change, of course, but equally it might not – that was sometimes the way it went - but the wolf didn't actively protest. He couldn't imagine being in the situation where the wolf wanted one thing and the man another. “What do you want me to do?”

“I will speak to him, see what he says.” Charles shrugged. “I will see how rational he is about it. And I will let you know.”

Their food arrived and they both silently tucked in. When their plates were nearly empty, Charles met Adam’s eye and held it, deliberately. “I can trust you to be discrete.”

Adam lowered his eyes, submissive. “You have my word.”

“Thank you. Thank you, also, for bringing this to my attention first.” Charles sighed and reached for his coffee. “I don’t know how this is going to unfold, but it won’t be pretty.”

“The risk is that Leah finds out?”

“Amongst other things, yes. Da might not be able break the mate bond. But Leah can and if she knew he was having an affair it’s the sort of vindictive thing she might do, never mind the fallout. That’s what I worry about.”

*

In the end, it was anti-climactic. A week passed and Adam received an email. _No more visitors_ , was all it said. Adam, relieved, and also a little sorrowful – he didn’t know why – deleted it and decided to think no more of it.

Mercy packed up her meagre belongings at the beginning of December and told him she was going to go stay with her mother over Christmas and until term started. 

They’d had a few interactions – at his invitation, she’d joined them for Sunday lunch a couple of times and had frequently baby-sat for Jesse, when Christy had been unable to find a sitter from the pack. Even Christy begrudgingly admitted she was a good babysitter - significantly firmer with Jesse than the pack were and one the few who could ensure Jesse followed their schedule. 

If Mercy had been told by Bran, or by Charles, that Adam had effectively spied on her, she didn't show it. She treated Adam respectfully, if occasionally with a hint of defiance in her eye when he found himself accidentally giving her orders, which gave him an inkling of the kind of young woman she really was when she wasn't toeing the line. 

He liked her, he liked her a great deal, and thought she had come to enjoy her time with them but acknowledged that the sadness he had felt from her when they had drunk lemonade together all those weeks before had never gone away. When she finally came to say her last goodbye, he hugged her tightly and wished her the best, made sure she had his number and insisted she called him if she ever needed anything. She was embarrassed but promised she would. She had cried when she said goodbye to Jesse, who cried as well, though she was too young to know what was happening.

In the years that followed, Adam had little interaction with the Marrok, which wasn’t unusual. His pack was healthy, his territory was well-defended and the relationships he had with the Others were manageable, only occasionally troublesome. There was no need to call the Marrok in for help and if he did occasionally need advice, he asked it of Charles. 

He didn’t ask after Mercy and he didn’t hear about her, except the occasional nostalgic anecdote from other alphas which Adam found less charming and more depressing than he used to. 

To say he forgot about her wouldn’t be accurate. Very occasionally, perhaps when he saw a woman who might superficially look a little like her, he would see a flash of her smile in his mind’s eye followed by a small kick in the region of his heart. That was all.


	2. Chapter 2

Adam woke, in the middle of the night, to what could only be described as a psychic explosion. He retched uncontrollably over the side of the bed, glad that Christy was no longer beside him to chastise him for disturbing her sleep. Once he had sorted through the pack bonds, ensuring they were all in place and no one was hurting, he did his best to stymie some of the pain, and picked up the phone to call Charles.

The phone rang and rang and rang. He hung up. Seconds later, his phone rang. “Charles?” he answered, without looking at the number.

“It’s Angus,” the booming voice of the Alpha of the Emerald city said shortly. “I can’t get hold of Charles or anyone in Aspen Creek. What the hell was that?”

Adam managed to stand. He walked to the window with one eye closed – the piercing headache was somehow improved with only one eye in use – and forced open the window, desperate for night air. He sucked in lungfuls. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Is this it? Has the Marrok gone Beserker on us? I heard stuff was going down with his mate. Things have been rough up there.”

“Heard what?” Adam had never been one for gossip, not like Angus. Though Angus would call it ‘networking’.

“She accused him of having an affair. Never heard anything more unlikely in my life,” Angus scoffed.

“Shit,” Adam said. _Mercy_. This was what Charles had been afraid of. What they all should have been afraid of.

“Exactly. Call me if you hear anything.”

From his bedroom window, he could see the trailer where Mercy had stayed and Bran had visited. He had hoped she’d gone to college, got her degree and moved on with her life. Obviously not. _Stupid_. How could Bran, of all people, be so stupid? He shook his head and winced as his head throbbed. Whatever he was feeling was a ricochet from whatever was going on with the Marrok, that was for certain, which meant this was a fraction of the pain Bran was going through.

If this was what a mate bond being severed felt like, he was glad he’d never had a mate to lose.

He managed to get some shut-eye, after dosing himself with some left-over painkillers he found in the cabinet. He woke to his phone ringing by his ear, where he had left it, and he pressed the ‘answer’ button. “Speak,” he said.

“Adam? It’s—“

He lifted his head more fully from his pillow. “Mercy. Jesus. Are you all right?”

“My car broke down. I’m on the 395, past Ritzville. I _need_ to get home, Adam.”

Adam sat up. “I’m coming,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Stay in your car.”

She sighed. “Thank you.”

*

An hour later, he found her easily enough and pulled up behind her decidedly dilapidated VW Rabbit, Darryl and Aurielle about a mile behind. She got out, arms wrapped about herself and approached him. “Thank you for coming,” she said. Her face was drawn, deep blue stains underneath her eyes.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked. She looked small and fragile to him. 

“I’m sure.”

They waited the few minutes more for Darryl and his mate to arrive and then Adam issued his instructions. Both of them looked at Mercy curiously but said nothing. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. I have my phone.”

He handed Mercy into his truck and set off.

At first, they drove in silence, nothing but the faint murmur of the radio for company. Adam found himself wanting to console her but equally not sure where to start. She was a ticking time bomb that he was driving directly to his Alpha who, for all Adam knew, was right now destroying himself and others around him.

“Adam,” Mercy said, eventually, “would you like to talk or do you plan to just sigh the whole way there?”

Adam snorted. “Talking would be good. Tell me what you know.”

“I felt a disturbance in the force, last night.”

His lips twitched, despite himself. “How? I didn’t think you were pack.”

“I’m not. At least, I didn’t think so. But it was like something exploded in my brain. I thought I was having a stroke.”

This had been similar to Adam’s experience. She was one of Bran’s then, if not formally. Curious. “So you got in a car and started driving,” Adam said drily, putting aside her mysterious connection to the Marrok.

“Well, I worked out pretty quickly I wasn’t.” She twisted the hem of her sweater between her fingers. “I knew it was him. I knew I had to go to him.”

Adam phrased his next question carefully. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“Before I left for college.”

He started. “Really? In Portland or…?”

“No. At the trailer.” Mercy turned to look at him. Her cheeks were coloured but her eyes, when he glanced at her, were sparkling with defiance. “We said goodbye. For the last time.”

Adam turned back to the road. “I see,” he said.

Perhaps Angus had it wrong, he thought. It had been nearly ten years.

They drove through Spokane in silence, except when he offered to stop at a Starbucks and Mercy admitted she hadn’t eaten recently. He bought an excessive quantity of pastries, some snack bars, four bottles of water and a bottle of orange juice, which Mercy declined.

“You knew. About us,” Mercy said quietly, twisting the lid of her water bottle.

“Yes. There are limited other conclusions to draw when you see a man climb into a young woman’s bedroom in the middle of the night.”

The corner of her mouth lifted. “Yeah. He said you told Charles.”

Adam nodded. “You were my responsibility. Was he angry?” he asked, intrigued. Bran didn’t hold grudges. At least, the sane version didn’t.

“No. He said you’d done the right thing. He said he kept doing the wrong thing.” She sighed and then made a noise perilously close to a growl. “It’s stupid. It feels like it was yesterday. I’ve had _many_ boyfriends since him. Why does it feel like this?”

Adam smiled, sadly. “That’s love for you.” Then he realised what he said and glanced at her. Though she was staring ahead, he could see her eyes were filled with tears. She pushed her sleeves against them and wiped them furiously. “I’m sorry, Mercy.”

“So stupid. _I’m_ so stupid to still—“ She stopped herself from admitting to a hopeless love. “He’s not dead, though?” She looked at him, eyes red and lashes clumped together, tears running down her cheeks.

“I don’t think so. I know what that feels like.”

Mercy cracked open the window and leaned against it, her loose hair covering her face as she cried quietly. After another hour had passed in silence, she took out her cell phone and tried calling Charles. She let it ring for a full minute. She didn’t need him to say it but the fact that Charles wasn’t answering was not a blindingly positive sign.

“Why don’t you try to get some sleep?” Adam suggested when she hung up and fidgeted with her cell some more. She was making him tense. Tenser. And she would need her strength when they got there.

She nodded and pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up, curling herself up against the window. Whilst she slept – or pretended to sleep – Adam thought through the plan. He intended to stop at the motel, first, get the lay of the land. Even the humans in the pack would know if there was trouble with the Marrok. Then he would drive to Charles’s and Change there. Ideally he’d convince Mercy to stay in his armoured truck with the windows and doors locked but it seemed unlikely. Worst case scenario, she would follow him in her coyote form.

When he got to the Marrok’s, however, and he saw what awaited them? _That_ he had no plan for. They would have to wing it.

He was beginning to wish he’d brought back-up. Warren, maybe. Consequently, he made a couple of phone calls. Darryl regaled him with the story of the fae they took the Rabbit to, whom Adam was pretty sure was some kind of terrifying creature from legend. He rung Jesse, too, because it was Saturday and he always rung her on Saturday when she was with her mom. He let her complain about Christy which a very selfish part of him enjoyed before the good father part of him intervened and talked her down off her high horse. He told her he loved her. “Love you too, Daddy,” she said. “Be safe.”

Afterwards, he found a radio station that played music he actually enjoyed, which lasted a whole hour before the signal became nothing but white noise. Then he turned it off.

Mercy woke with a gasp when they were two hours out. He nearly swerved in the road. “What is it?” he asked. He hadn’t felt anything himself. He checked the mirrors, in case he did and needed to pull over.

“Nothing, I just had a funny dream. About cold black fog,” she said, sounding unsure. “Where are we? Oh, I’ve been asleep for ages.”

She stretched, as if to make this point.

“A couple of hours out. You should eat something,” he said, gesturing at the Starbucks snacks.

She thanked him, politely, and broke into a nut bar. “What about you?”

“I’m fine.” He’d thrown a couple of frozen steaks into a cool bag before he’d left, putting it into the trunk along with a couple of changes of clothes. They would be defrosted by the time they got to Aspen Creek and he intended to eat them before he Changed.

He told her about his plan and she nodded. “Yeah, sounds good. I know most everyone who works at the motel and they know me. So that should help. I also know the security code to Charles’s house. He sends me a message each time he updates it.” She took a sip of water. “I always thought I annoyed him, growing up. But he’s always looked out for me, even now.”

“You’re family.” And Charles didn’t have much family.

Mercy ‘hmmm’ed and then, brightly, changed the subject. “How’s Jesse?”

They passed a relatively enjoyable half hour talking about his daughter, with Mercy peppering him with questions about what Jesse was like, what subjects she enjoyed at school, did she still like hiding in cupboards. Mercy made him laugh, Adam realised, the smile on his face feeling alien. He felt a little lighter. He found himself able to talk about Christy. Talking about Christy with someone outside of the pack was a relief. Surprisingly, despite Christy's attitude, Mercy hadn’t really formed much of an opinion about his ex-wife and if she had, she dismissed it with one casual comment, “Women don’t tend to like me.”

“That can’t be true.”

“Maybe women in werewolf packs,” she amended, thoughtfully. “I had girl friends in college. Good girl friends. But put me in a pack or adjacent to a pack and I can guarantee you the women will hate me. It’s because I don’t fit.” She shrugged, as if this didn’t bother her.

“You fit just fine. Maybe other people are just stuck in their ways.”

“That’s kind of you to say, Adam.”

That was the sort of thing a woman said if they wanted you to stop talking about something. Adam stopped.

About a mile out from Aspen Creek, Adam unlocked the doors and windows. At Mercy’s look, he explained, “If we’re hit by an angry werewolf, I want you to get out easily. No, keep your seatbelt on,” he said, when she made a move to undo it. “They can flip a car, as well.”

“I know that,” she muttered, almost entirely to herself. “It’s not been _that_ long.”

The first hint that their plan was not going to come to much was when they drew up outside the motel.

“That motel has never closed a day in my life,” Mercy said in awe, summarising Adam’s feelings neatly. And yet, still, the ‘closed’ sign swung in a breeze. The lights were off. There were no cars parked outside.

Adam drove on to Charles’s. He wasn’t surprised to see the house was also dark and there was no car in the drive. Mercy’s code worked and she let him into Charles’s house. “I’m going to use the bathroom,” she said. She gestured to the back. “Kitchen’s through there. Help yourself to whatever.”

When she came out, Adam was just finishing off the last of the steak he had brought with him and was staring out at the view, looking for movement in the trees. “Is there a change of clothes in there?” he asked, nodding at the bag she had brought with her.

“Yeah.”

“You should carry it with you. Leave what you’re wearing here,” he said.

Mercy lifted her sleeve and sniffed. “I smell like you?” she guessed.

“Yes.”

She gave him space whilst he Changed and then he watched, slightly jealousy, as she transformed into her coyote form. She had transferred her clothes to a small bag she had found in Charles’s laundry and was able to carry it in her mouth. Though he didn’t like being restricted, he did the same.

Together, they made for the Marrok’s house.

*

They approached downwind, slowly. Already, the pungent scents of cars, trucks and werewolves told him the pack had assembled at the Marrok’s house. He could also smell burning – not out of control, perhaps a bonfire – and blood.

He kept a wary eye on their surroundings, thinking that when the pack was vulnerable there would be scouts watching for intrusions. He didn’t want them to be jumped before they had got the lay of the land.

They crept through the trees until the house was in sight. Like Charles’s – the house was dark and even though it was still daylight, it was coming on sunset so he would have expected one or two lights to be on. The sliding doors that led out onto the back terrace were open, however. And there was a bonfire, smouldering now, that had been started too close to the house. After a moment, he realised someone had been burning clothes, books, even paintings. The scent was almost overpowering. There were things that were burning that shouldn’t be burning in that pile – plastic, metal, leather. His nose twitched.

Mercy nudged him, directing his attention to the pole barn. The pole barn had been where they had often held meetings in the past. Bran would mark out circle with chalk on the concrete floor and they would all stand around it to hold their discussions and look at each other equally. He had always suspected there was magic involved because no discussion held in the pole barn had ever come to blows.

Mercy dropped her bag and started her transformation. She crouched, naked. “I can feel him in there,” she said softly, as she got dressed.

Adam was surprised. He turned to look around them whilst she dressed.

“Do you want to Change?” she asked.

He thought about it and nodded. It would be better to be able to communicate with her. He drew upon the pack bonds so he could make the change faster, grateful for the foresight to pack the steaks for energy, and pulled on the dark sweats he had brought with him. Neither of them had shoes.

They kept to the treeline rather than cross the open space to the pole barn. When they were close enough, Adam held up a hand so they could listen. The barn had been insulated, so it was reasonably soundproofed but it was possible to hear something. Someone, a woman, was half-talking, half-singing. It wasn’t a voice he recognised.

From the look on Mercy’s face, though, she did recognise the voice. She looked relieved.

They crept around the pole barn to the entrance. The door had to be open because the voice was clearer. The woman’s voice was hoarse, as if she had been talk-singing for a long time. She was singing something in a language he didn’t recognise. An old language. Out of the range of the bonfire, Adam could now smell blood.

In a way, he wasn’t surprised to see what was inside. The Aspen Creek pack were formed in the same circle Adam had stood in, on their bellies in wolf or human form, faces pressed to the ground. Off from the centre of the circle was a small woman, with curling brown hair. She was also lying on the floor but her hand was wrapped around the ankle of the man seated in the middle of the circle - the Marrok of the wolves. Bran sat, naked, chest smeared with streaks of dried blood, his legs crossed and his head lowered, in a clearly meditative stance.

At their entrance, Bran’s head lifted. And his eyes opened. 

_Not Bran,_ Adam thought as sheer, instinctual terror coursed through him and he sank to his knees and then to his stomach. _Not Bran._

He raised his hand to touch Mercy, to pull her to the ground too, but at the last moment clenched his fist. If even the slightest part of the Marrok’s wolf considered Mercy to be his, touching her would be a very definite death sentence. From his vantage point on the floor, he could only just lift his eyes enough to her bare feet as she padded slowly, hesitantly towards the circle.

“Mercy, _get down_ ,” someone hissed, a millisecond before he managed it. That same someone immediately gagged and whimpered, as if they had been silenced.

Mercy dropped to her knees, lowered her head. And crawled.

From the tiny glimpses Adam allowed himself, the amber gaze of the wolf watched Mercy approach with an intensity that very few Alphas of Adam’s acquaintance would have been brave enough to face.

The woman in the circle with him – who had to be the Omega Charles was recently mated to – swallowed, loudly, and then picked up her croaking song. In that brief second of her pausing, a sinister wave of horrifying cold, black power permeated the room. Someone started to cry. As she picked up the song once more, it ebbed back but its deathly fingers licked at the room, licked at each of them. Adam pressed his belly to the ground, trying to get away from the sensation.

The only reason they were all alive was because of her, Adam realised. If she stopped singing, they were all going to die.

He inched forward on his belly, using only his fingers and toes to push himself. The rest of the pack had been here for some hours. They were weak with terror. If it came down to it, Adam would grab Mercy and make a run for it. It was suicidal but if he got her far enough away, she could change and may have a chance to escape.

Mercy had reached the circle now, crawling between two wolves he didn’t recognise but who flinched away from her, as if touching her would taint them.

Almost as if the circle of chalk was a boundary she struggled to cross, Mercy paused and then, after two deep breaths, she crawled forward past it. A ripple of something passed through the room, brushing over Adam and confirmed his theory that the circle itself was some kind of mild magic.

Not-Bran watched, nothingness behind his amber eyes, as Mercy crept towards him, her head lowered. She brushed her hand over the Omega female and crawled until her lowered head nearly touched his chest.

She was shaking, as well she should be.

“What happened?” she whispered.

The Omega answered in her sing-song voice. “Leah’s gone and she broke him.” The words seamlessly fitted into her whispered song, the lyrics of which were unintelligible now, just a sound that carried her power. 

“Dead?” Mercy whispered.

“No,” someone to their right sighed. “Charles went after her.”

So Charles wasn’t even here. Not good. The Aspen Creek pack was made up of unstable minds and bodies. Even now, as Adam reached the boundary of chalk, he could see the roving eye of a few who were one drop of spilled blood from losing their minds. Without Charles here, they had limited wolves of mental and emotional capacity to manage in such a situation.

Not that Adam knew _he_ could manage in such a situation. A few hours under that blackness and he might lose it completely, too.

Mercy blew out a breath and Adam knew what she was about to do before she did it. He cringed, helplessly, even as every protective instinct in his body wanted to reach out to grab her, to stop her. He whined.

She looked up and met the Beserker’s eyes.

The black coldness smothered them all, dropped like a blanket that had been hanging above them. With it came a rush of icy terror. He heard the _whomp, whomp, whomp_ of blood rushing through his head, felt his pulse beat thickly in his temples as he curled into himself and shuddered as warmth drained from him. It was hard, no, impossible to breathe. He reached out, in panic, to his pack, through the bonds, drawing their strength to him and they gave it up readily, suffusing him with their energy, with their love, willing him to survive.

Then, a flick of a mental light switch. _Click_. The darkness was gone.

Someone laughed, a short, hysterical sound. Adam had to touch his mouth to make sure it wasn’t him. He pulled himself upright, because he could, and, dreading what he would find, looked up.

Mercy was still in the middle of the room, her hands on Bran’s shoulders and his hands on her waist. She was breathing.

“There you are,” Bran murmured slowly, eyes blinking gold to hazel. Then those eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped sideways, caught at the last minute by Mercy diving forward.

There was a whoosh of air as everyone in the room seemed to start breathing at the same time.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god, we survived,” someone whispered.

Adam dragged himself to standing. He felt like he’d been beaten, every muscle in his body protested at the movement. “Mercy,” he said, swaying. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, he’s heavier than he looks,” she grunted, pulling Bran into her lap and looking around. She seemed remarkably calm, considering. One hand reached out to stroke the head of the woman lying on the floor next to her. “Anna? Are you okay? We should get her to bed. _Everyone_ should get to bed.”

Adam heard cars pulling up outside. He sighed with relief.

“Who’s that?” asked a dark voice. Adam knew better than to turn to look – he wasn’t certain the voice came from a stable body and he was in no shape to attempt a dominance fight.

“Reinforcements,” he said, going outside to update his people.

*

Charles returned and, if he was surprised to find Adam, several of his people, and a spontaneous BBQ in his father’s yard, complete with the entirety of the Aspen Creek pack, his expression didn’t show it.

“I have a lot of questions,” he said, instead.

“You and me both." Adam thumbed over his shoulder. "We needed a lot of food, very quickly,” he explained, perhaps unnecessarily. As he hadn't asked permission for his pack to be there, nor to effectively take over managing the situation, he felt uncomfortable. His people were slapping burgers between buns and steaks and sausages on plates, which the exhausted Aspen Creek pack were finishing off as quickly as they could cook them.

“Where’s my father? My wife?”

“Inside. He’s… himself, at least.” Adam walked Charles in through the back of the house where Mercy was sitting on the sofa, with an unconscious Bran’s head in her lap. Asleep, Bran could have been a perfectly innocent college student. Mercy had draped a blanket over him and was reading a book. She looked tired but also strangely luminous, somehow younger. On the other sofa across from them, Anna was asleep, curled up under a comforter fetched from upstairs. The wolf – the Moor, almost as terrifying as Bran – was sleeping at her feet.

“Hey, Charles,” Mercy said, lifting her arm up so he could take it. She smiled tiredly.

Charles clasped her hand to his abdomen. “Did you do this?”

Mercy shook her head. “Anna did all of the work, I assure you. She kept everyone alive. I don’t think she’ll be able to talk for a while, though.” When they had got her into the house, she’d drunk down a cup of honey-ed tea, whispered her thanks, and then collapsed. “What about,” Mercy’s eyes flicked down to the sleeping man in her lap, “you know who?”

“I lost her. She had a series of cars set up under different pseudonyms. She planned this.” The darkness in Charles’s voice brought back the thought of those cold dark fingers and Adam took a deep breath. “But it doesn’t matter now. He has what he needs.”

Mercy smiled, resting her head on the back of the cushion. “We can kill her later,” she said, dreamily, closing her eyes.

“We can kill her later,” Charles agreed.

*

When Adam woke, just before dawn, he found Bran in the yard, kicking through the remains of the bonfire. He approached him with caution. If he wasn't mistaken, he was wearing the sweatshirt Mercy had worn the day before. There was still a smear of blood on his cheek.

Adam had been around his fair share of newly mated werewolves and recognised, belatedly, what the luminosity he had seen in Mercy yesterday was when he also saw it reflected on Bran's face.

“She burned my favorite things,” Bran said without greeting Adam, nudging the remains of a picture frame.

“Traditional.” Christy had done something similar with his work suits. It had been one of the last straws for their relationship. There had been several ‘last straws’ because Adam had been convinced each time he could make it work.

“I didn’t know she knew what my favorite things were,” Bran continued, bending down to brush fingers through ashes to pull out something. A coin. “Ah-hah. My Aethelred penny. There’s a piece of luck.”

“Seriously?” Adam said, almost to himself.

Bran sighed and stood, pocketing the penny. He smiled at Adam, every inch the Bran Adam had known his whole werewolf life. The harmless, mild-mannered young man, who could destroy them all with a thought. “I’ve you to thank for bringing her to me.”

“Not really. She was going to get to you. I just happened to be nearest.” He suspected if he hadn't, she'd have hitched a ride. Or stolen a car.

“Much longer and it would have been too late. Thank you. For now." Bran tilted his head to the side. "And for before, when you took care of her for me.”

Adam wondered what would have happened if he hadn't told Charles. Would this situation have occurred sooner or later? 

“It was my honour,” Adam said, properly, bowing his head. He pressed a toe against the ash at the edge of the bonfire. He wondered if he had gathered enough personal credit to be nosy. “What happened? How did she find out?”

“It appears Leah had known for some time. She was simply biding her time. She and Sage.”

“Over ten years?” He wouldn't have thought Leah had the patience. She was a woman of action. He didn't know who Sage was - he assumed someone from the pack who had sided with Leah.

“She has a very strong vindictive streak. She was clever, to keep it from me, I’ll give her that. I didn't know she was capable.” Bran looked around the yard, at the pole barn that Mercy insisted would need to be torn down. His brow wrinkled, then smoothed. “It would have been a diabolical revenge.”

Beowulf, in the modern age, Adam thought, having been inches from that revenge. Diabolical indeed. "I think she could probably have just left it at burning all your favorite things and suing you for everything you've got," Adam said, mildly.

Bran smiled. "Perhaps a more proportionate response but then who ever said werewolves were proportionate?" He sighed and it was regretful. "No, I was cruel. She did not deserve it. She will not die for this." This last was said with the authority of an order. Adam nodded his head.

They both turned at the creak of the step on the decking, at Mercy, wrapped in a blanket, blinking at the coming daylight. She yawned, broadly, and shuffled over to them in bare feet. She grimaced down at the pile of ash and tucked herself against Bran’s side. “The wolf painting was ugly.”

Bran put his arm around her and looked down at her like he was seeing the moon for the first time. It was almost painfully intimate. “It was a masterpiece.”

“I was _six_.”

“You’ll have to do me another.”

It clicked. “Oh, I know which one you mean. It had a bow,” Adam said. He waved his hand over his head. “A blue one.” If he wasn’t mistaken, the young Mercy had been attempting to recreate Bran’s wolf form, down to the distinctive marking at the tip of his tail. He sincerely hoped Bran had posed for it.

“With pink spots,” Bran said, looking pleased that someone else recalled it. “There was a series. Pig with a Bow. Kangaroo with a Bow. Duck with a Bow.”

“Kangaroo. Impressive.”

Mercy’s eyes were dancing and she looked between them. “I was very well read.”

In the house, Adam heard the familiar sound of his cell phone. An early call was never good sign. He sighed.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said, backing away. He glanced over his shoulder before he entered the house, to see that Mercy had wrapped her blanket around Bran’s shoulders and they were face to face, foreheads touching. He turned away, just before they began to kiss, rubbing his hand over his chest, where something in his heart had flipped over, mournfully.

“Mary-Jo,” he said, answering the phone, “what’s wrong?”

  
  


End 


End file.
